UPDATE: DOWNIE CLEARED, PRACTICE NOTES (9:30 PM, EST)
Even with the Flyers taking Sunday off, I did not expect Monday's practice at the Skate Zone in Voorhees to be as intensive as it was just ahead of the team's upcoming three-in-four road trip that will take them to Ottawa, Pittsburgh and Winnipeg within the next 96 hours. The club practiced today at an extremely high tempo, while doing standard line rush reps, two-on-one drills, forechecking and breakouts and working in short-distance sprints.
Steve Mason was especially sharp today, knocking aside almost everything sent his way. At one point, the Vincent Lecavalier line skated in a three-man breakaway on the Flyers goaltender and Mason came up not only with the initial shot but a pair of rebounds.
Today's practice lines were basically the same as the groupings in the Edmonton game. However, Steve Downie participated fully in practice (sporting a full face shield), skating on Sean Couturier's line with Matt Read. Michael Raffl did not practice at all, which led us to wonder if he had been sent down to the Phantoms. As it turned out, Raffl is still with the team but was held off the ice because he's battling the flu.
A few hours after practice it was confirmed that Downie has received medical clearance. He is expected in the lineup tomorrow night.
DOWNIE UPDATES HIS STATUS
CRAIG BERUBE TALKS ABOUT UPCOMING ROAD TRIP, RESPONSE TO ADVERSITY
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AWAY-HEAVY PORTION OF SEASON STARTS WITH TOUGH ROAD TRIP
On paper at least, the first six weeks of the Philadelphia Flyers' 2013-14 schedule was the most favorable portion of the season docket from a travel and fatigue perspective. The club played seven of its first 11 games and 10 of its first 16 games at home.
Ideally, the team would have be sitting with a far better than it has right now (5-10-1) but all Craig Berube's squad can do is move onward and try to climb out of the early-season hole it has dug for itself. Now the schedule and travel are about to get much tougher.
Over the team's next 27 games -- spanning the period between Nov. 12 and Jan. 7 -- the Flyers will play 19 on the road and just eight at home. That will include three different stretches of three games in four nights.
The road-heavy portion of the Flyers' schedule gets started on Tuesday night in Ottawa. The next night, the Flyers are in Pittsburgh to take on the arch-rival Penguins. Thereafter, the Flyers have to travel back to Canada again; heading to Manitoba to play the Winnipeg Jets on Friday.
Next week, the Flyers have a three-game homestand with matches against Ottawa, Buffalo and the Islanders. Thereafter, the Flyers only skate on home ice five more times between Nov. 23 and Jan. 7.
So far in 2013-14, the Flyers are 2-3-1 in away games and 3-7-0 at home. Last season, the Flyers had a 15-7-2 record at home but an 8-15-1 mark on the road. The previous season, however, they were road warriors with a stellar 25-13-3 mark away from the Wells Fargo Center.
It may not be the worst thing for the Flyers to get out on the road for awhile. For one thing, I think it could help the team get its scuffling power play on track away from the booing Wells Fargo Center crowds. For another, I think Berube's system at five-on-five is more conducive to playing "road-style" hockey -- third forward high in the offensive zone, have a safety valve in the defensive zone, keep feet moving in order to move the puck forward and backcheck when needed -- than trying to please the home crowd.
That theory is about to be put to the test this week. The Flyers are about to go into three tough buildings to play in on the road, and to play a rested Penguins team as the second game of a back-to-back and middle game of a three-in-four is never a favorable matchup on paper.
Of course, you know the cliche about the games being played on ice rather than paper. Even so, it will take a lot of doing for the Flyers to navigate this three-game stretch successfully. I would personally consider five out of a possible six points (2-0-1) to be a real good week of work that will make some headaway in getting the team on track.
The Flyers took Sunday off. They resume practice at 11 a.m. on Monday at the Skate Zone in Voorhees before departing at 2:30 for the flight to Ottawa. I will have a post-practice update to today's blog either late in the afternoon or early in the evening.
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SHERO HONORED IN TORONTO
Monday also marks the day that Fred Shero will finally take his place in the Hockey Hall of Fame. He will be inducted into the Builders category, in which Keith Allen and Ed Snider are already inductees. Pittsburgh Penguins general manager Ray Shero will accept on his late father's behalf. To celebrate the long-awaited occasion, Snider is flying 15 former Flyers players who played under Shero along with himself to Toronto.
There has been a slew of many fine articles and blogs written about Shero's influence on the game. I hope that people are finally beginning to understand that the Broad Street Bullies didn't win two Stanley Cups and go to three straight Finals because they beat up other teams.
The Flyers accomplished that feat because they had one of the sport's all-time greatest general managers and a visionary coach who understood how to get the most from his players. They had three Hall of Fame players, including their goaltender and two-thirds of the top line. They had the best locker room leadership, the hardest-working corps of players in the league, plenty of talent depth an an unmatched sense of unity.
Much of Shero's genius lay in his ability to get players not only to buy into his system but also to embrace their roles on the team. The fights and brawling were the basis of the team's reputations to outsiders but, within the club itself, the rough stuff was just one piece of a much more important priority of winning hockey games.
Over the last year or so, there has finally been widespread attention paid to the many ways that Shero was miles ahead of most of his coaching peers in the NHL. He was often branded an eccentric -- and he was, to some degree -- but everything Shero did had a purpose behind it.
By the time Shero finally got his due credit and hailed as an innovator, many of his ideas had long since been adopted league-wide: everything from the use of assistant coaches, game-day morning skates, the incorporation of video study to his highly developed and structured X-and-O system influenced subsequent coaches.
As Shero himself once wrote on the Flyers' locker room blackboard: "When the man who was always called a kook starts to be called an innovator, it means he's not innovative anymore."
On the International Ice Hockey Federation's official Web site, I took an in-depth look at one of the many genuine innovations that the late Fred Shero brought to the NHL: studying and adapting European hockey tactics to fit the small-rink game. For more on Shero's contributions in the realm of studying and adapting international hockey to the NHL,
click here.
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PELLE LINDBERGH REMEMBERED
As has become customary every May 24 and Nov. 10 or 11th on my Flyers blog here at HockeyBuzz, I am running a previously unpublished excerpt from the Pelle Lindbergh biography that I co-authored with Thomas Tynander. Today marks 28 years since Lindbergh's official death date, although he had been rendered brain dead in the wee hours of Nov. 10, 1985.
Later today on HockeyBuzz, Pelle's former Flyers teammate Brad Marsh and Brad's son, Erik, will share their personal perspectives on Lindbergh. Brad and wife Patti named Erik after Pelle when he was born the month after the Vezina-winning goaltender's tragic and needless car crash.
For now, I hope you enjoy this previously unseen excerpt from "Behind the White Mask". This excerpt from Chapter 24, which was trimmed down for space, talks in-depth about Lindbergh's love for fast cars and tendency to drive recklessly.
Pelle bought his first Porsche after earning an NHL spot with the Flyers. He purchased an original Porsche 930 (manufactured in 1969) from Rolf Tellsten's Porsche garage in the Stockholm suburb of Täby. Lindbergh drove it both in Philadelphia and Stockholm, and would take it to Tellsten for service during the summer.
Reino Sundberg recalls, "Pelle and I took a drive from Nacka to Värmdö in his first Porsche. We went out when there wasn't any traffic. Pelle kicked the speed up to 255 kilometers (153 miles) per hour, and then Pelle even got the car up to 260 KPH (156 MPH). I told him afterwards that he needed to calm down with it."
Lindbergh decided that he'd found the maximum speed his Porsche could reach on the open road. But now he wanted a car that could go even faster.
In 1983, while competing for Team Sweden at the IIHF World Championship in West Germany, Lindbergh and Thomas Eriksson took a tour of the Porsche factory in Stuttgart.
"I loved Porsches almost as much as Pelle did, and we were like kids in a candy store at the factory," Eriksson says.
It's at about this time that Pelle decides he wants to get a new Porsche. Not just a new "ordinary" Porsche, either. He wants a one-of-a-kind car, regardless of the cost.
After returning to Sweden from the tournament, Lindbergh and Eriksson go together to a Porsche dealership on Lindhagsplan in Stockholm. Pelle buys a new-generation Porsche 930 Turbo (1984 model) in red. Eriksson picks a Porsche Carrera Targa.
Lindbergh offers most everyone he knows a ride in his car. Few take him up on it more than once.
Sudsy Settlemyre recalls, "When we were together, I almost always drove, because I refused to sit in a car with Pelle behind the wheel. He was crazy. One time I went out on a double date with Pelle and Kerstin, and Pelle starts showing off, spinning the car and leaving round black tracks on the asphalt and smoke around the whole car. I screamed at him from the back seat, 'We're just going out to dinner with the ladies, cut that shit out!'"
Pelle stops. But he'd give Settlemyre other occasions to yell at him for his recklessness behind the wheel.
"Pelle drove home my son, Derek, when Derek was 14. He wanted to show off for my kid, so he floors it and drove 130 miles an hour. When Derek told me what happened, I flipped out on Pelle. I put my both my hands on his neck and shouted, 'You goddamn fool! That's my boy! If you ever drive like that again with him in the car, I swear to God, I'll strangle you to death!'"
Lindbergh apologizes profusely. Settlemyre forgives him, but he remains extremely concerned.
"I remember that in the fall of 1984, I said to my girlfriend Roberta that Pelle's car is like a red rocket and this whole thing is going to end up real bad some day."
Jack Prettyman shares the same concern. He's warned Lindbergh on many occasions to slow down and the plea always falls of deaf ears as does advice from Lindbergh's other friends on the force. Prettyman decideds to try to scare Pelle straight.
The officer phones trainer Sudsy Settlemyre at the Coliseum.
"Pelle is going to be driving up in about 30 seconds," the police officer says.
"How do you know that?" Settlemyre asks.
"I was just in touch with an ambulance that was out on call. Pelle just overtook it in his car. So now I want you to scare him. If he keeps driving that way, something bad is going to happen."
Pelle was unable to take his Porsche along on the Flyers' road trips. But that didn't mean he was off the road.
"Everyone knew how Pelle loved cool cars. I remember that whenever we were in Los Angeles and had free time, he went up to Beverly Hills and rented a sports car," Dave Poulin says.
Lindbergh tries out several different cars, renting a Ferrari or a Lamborghini for the day. Sometimes he takes along Philadelphia Inquirer beat writer Al Morganti, who also loved fast cars.
"Pelle really loved LA. I remember one time, we were driving one of these high-powered sports cars and we saw some young kids get off a school bus and go to a house that had to have cost hundreds of millions of dollars," Morganti says.
"Pelle was floored, and he wondered out loud, 'If someone lives here and they die, where do they go? They're already in heaven.'
"Eventually, I stopped driving with Pelle. When he got the red Porsche, he really started driving like a maniac. I told him to slow down and he just smiled and sped up. If I tried to kid him and tell him I just saw a cop, he also sped up. I drove pretty fast myself at the time, but when I went with Pelle, I got scared. That Porsche went entirely too fast. It was beyond any conceivable speed limit.
"That car was extremely difficult to drive, especially with the turbo kick. It was hard to steer, and when the turbo kicked in, the back wheels would lift off the road. I told that to Pelle and he just said, 'Yeah, yeah, but you just have to learn your car.'"
The last time Morganti rode with Lindbergh was a few weeks before Anna Lisa and Göran's visit. Pelle and Morganti were in Atlantic City, and Lindbergh showed off the recent renovations on his car, hitting speeds of over 120 miles per hour with scarcely any effort.
"I said to him, 'You're going to die,' and he laughed at me," Morganti recalls.
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When he's not tempting fate behind the wheel of the Porsche, Lindbergh takes care of his favorite toy with almost paternalistic concern.
"When Pelle was home on a Sunday afternoon, he loved to go outside to wash and polish the car," Kerstin recalls. "Also, he didn't like to drive it in bad weather and almost never drove it after dark."
If Kerstin's Mercedes had not broken down on the night of November 9, 1985, Pelle would have driven her car to Bennigans and the Coliseum.
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